Training Programs, Courses and Conferences

Equally important for the success of EMBL Australia are the mechanisms set in place for ensuring the widest dissemination of expertise and benefits to the Australian scientific communities and beyond. In Europe, one of EMBL’s core missions has been the provision of advanced training. EICAT, the EMBL International Centre for Advanced Training, coordinates integrated training activities for scientists at different levels. EICAT pursues a dual mission: to provide first-rate training for the scientists who work at EMBL, and to serve as a European hub of advanced training for those who primarily work elsewhere. Headquartered at the main EMBL laboratory in Heidelberg, Germany, EICAT promotes joint advanced training activities between the five EMBL sites, integrating their respective experience and know-how, creating synergies between EMBL and its sister institution EMBO, and between the Laboratory and research organizations and networks in the EMBL member states, including Australia.

EICAT coordinates activities amongst the EMBL training branches including the EMBL International PhD Program, and a recently initiated Postdoctoral Program that gives future independent researchers the leadership and other management skills they need for careers in science. Using similar models, the EMBL Australia Scientific Program will ensure the training of young scientists at all levels from PhD students to independent Group Leaders.

EICAT also runs the highly successful EMBL Courses, Conferences and Workshops Program and collaborates with the EMBL Science and Society Program. Due to the dedicated involvement of the scientist-organisers, EICAT’s dissemination activities are of very high scientific quality, and will be exploited to spearhead similar, complementary activities within the EMBL Australia Scientific Program.

EICAT hosts the European Learning Laboratory for the Life Sciences [ELLS], an education facility for high school teachers, whose mission is to bridge the gap between research and classrooms. There is a worrying current trend throughout Australia for school children not to choose a science curriculum. To help reverse this tendency and to secure the educated manpower required for a knowledge-based economy, children need to be exposed to the most interesting aspects of science at an early age. EMBL has organised a series of “Life Science Learning Laboratories” that can be readily exported to Australia to help teachers find out what is new in the life sciences, and help them design practicals that can work in a school environment in order to illuminate these advances in an interesting way for children.